


Revolution

by AnneMcSommers



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Anarchy, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:13:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29121732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnneMcSommers/pseuds/AnneMcSommers
Summary: Five knew from the first moment he stepped onto the perfectly maintained lawn of the commission compound, that he would burn it to the ground.
Kudos: 18





	Revolution

The system was broken. That much was obvious to him from the very beginning. From the first time Five stepped onto the gleaming 1950’s era commission compound, still filthy from years traveling a dusty, empty world he knew that it was wrong. 

The handler was there beside him blathering on, incorrectly assuming that after 50 years alone that Five would long for companionship. She too was wrong, her overdone hair, flared dress a dark parody of what he could remember of his mother, looking no more real than the robot did. He tuned her out as he looked around, assessing everything, gathering data. 

There wasn't a single calculation he had made in the last 30 years that would account for a place like this; no wonder the numbers had never added up. He followed along beside her politely, trying to fake what he remembered of social norms; which wasn’t much as he had never had much patience for them in the first place. Fingers twitching as he passed stacks of notebooks, and pens, barely resisting the urge to grab them and start revising the calculations. 

The math had gotten more and more out there over the years, but he must have been close if this is when they had chosen to come for him. He took the suit he was offered, and the room, and took the first real shower he had since that morning he left the academy, and he plotted. The end of this thing that was broken, that would work to end the world simply because it was what they felt was meant to be, would kill anything, anyone, that got in its way.

The first step would be the easiest, and the hardest, play along. Five had spent 30 years alone, and he knew it must show. For this to work he would need to be able to blend in, to be accepted by this place, these people, so that they would give up their secrets. And that was what he did, for five long years he did what he was told. He accepted all training offered, he became an expert marksman, killing whoever was needed. Even by expressing his desire for promotion in the longer term, for after he would renew his contract. He was trained in a lot more than that. 

It was four years in when he first asked how early he could renew his contract. When the handler walked him into the office he explained his interest in case management, in moving up. He was after all not a young man anymore, and while he enjoyed his work, he couldn't see doing it forever. He had spun the lie before, that he had given up on his family, but that was the day he sold it, and the handler herself started showing him how to do probability equations. 

She of course thought he was doing them solely to get trained up for his 5-year, and then his 10-year reviews. When in fact he had started, in secret of course, to calculate the path back to his family. To stop the apocalypse, and then come back for this place so that it didn’t just start back up again. 

The day he figured it out, the day the equation balanced in his head he standing there in his three-piece suit looking down the barrel of a sniper rifle, that was when he made his first real mistake. He acted impulsively, and without thought to the 15 year plan he had devised, Five jumped. When he found himself looking up at his family in his 13-year-old body and an over sized suit, he knew he had screwed up. 5 years of planning gone to waste after one stupid decision. After that it was all playing catch up, and looking 13 just meant that no one took him seriously; an obstacle he didn't need. His siblings were useless, and while he wanted to save them, dealing with their issues would have to come later.

For now he would focus his attention on a single goal, stopping the apocalypse from coming. As he followed the handler onto campus a second time, this time adorned in school boy shorts, it as all he could do to keep the smirk off his face. This time he would do it, this time he would burn it all down.


End file.
